Security Forces Info | about
Myanmar
About this Resource
Security Forces Info (sfi) examines the time-bound connections between allegations of human rights violations and various units and people of Police, Prisons, Militaries & Militias.
This is a new tool from Security Force Monitor. We conduct open-source research on security forces and provide research, technical and data analysis support to advocates, journalists and litigators. We are a project based at the Columbia Law Human Rights Institute.
The dataset covers a portion of the Security Force Monitor’s data on Myanmar. Additional Myanmar data and versions for several other countries will be coming soon.
This platform is in Beta and the active mapping of security forces is limited due to funding constraints. Funding for the Security Force Monitor currently runs through November 2025.
New features for this platform which could be developed include: interactive maps & geospatial analysis, private instances/deployments for organizations, translations of the platform and/or data, data downloads, and API access. As an open-source tool this platform could also be customized to support other thematic applications (such as supply chain analysis).
Incidents in this database are public claims made by a civil society organization, an international organization, a government, or another source that a violation of human rights was perpetrated by the defense and security forces of a country. The Security Force Monitor does not document human rights violations and nothing on this platform should be taken as the Monitor making an allegation against a unit or person
Please get in touch if you find this resource useful.
Getting Started
To get started, visit the pages which collect information about:
Or see the units with the most incidents which name them as a perpetrator:
Or the commanders with the most incidents alleged against subordinate units
Who made this resource?
This resource was made using research, data, and analysis from Security Force Monitor and consulting, a data model, and development from DOT • STUDIO.
People involved:
| Research, Data & Direction | Tony Wilson, Security Force Monitor |
| Concept & Geo | Tom Longley, Security Force Monitor |
| Concept, Data Model & Development | Niko Para, DOT • STUDIO |
How was it made?
This data is based off a novel data format derived from a decade of sfm’s research and methodology. It retains sources for each claim in the system such as a unit's possible names, when it was first seen, and including which publication wrote what information.
Meta-analysis builds command chains withe time-bound integrity. Person A was in charge of B at the same time B was of C. More information on Methodology can be found on our investigation in Myanmar: Under Whose Command.
Technically, this is a svelte-based static site built off of a datomic database, using time-based graph queries & analysis. PostGIS is used for geographic analysis. The whole website is just a .zip of html files—made to last forever. More technical information can be found on DOT • STUDIO'S case study.
What's with those dates?
We attempt to attempt to express cleanly—in both logical analysis and presentation—the imprecision that we discover while citing time periods from sources. Some examples of imprecise dates ranges include:
These dates express a period of time in which an entity was first seen—or claimed to have started—and another period establishing the end or latest point in time of the entity's existence for purposes of analysis. Between these periods we can infer that the entity existed: a person as a commander of a unit is inferred if we have sources citing some start and some end.
Ranges can be either precise or imprecise. Imprecise ranges are expressed with dotted lines or tildes (〜). These ranges imply something happened at some point within these two dates. Logically, in analysis, it means "True for at least some dates within this range"
Precise ranges imply "True for all dates within this range". Only precise ranges are used to establish linkages in this tool. In the second above example, the ending range 2015/8/10〜2016/5/25 implies that, due to imprecision in the sources, the range could be valid all the way up to 2016–5–25. However, 2015–8–10 is the date used in analysis because it is the last precise date in the range.